It is all in the planning

Chocolat will be my third project and the biggest thing I have learned from one and two is to try my best to plan rather than just 'do'.

Wentworth began as Jane Austin's house, moved through to just any old Georgian and finally arrived at a 1980 house in Cheltenham with me and my children in it.  This created a lot of unnecessary work and expense. It was the only dolls house I intended doing and then I saw....

The Honeychurch shop and it was to be Le Tout Paris - an Art Nouveau ladies shop.  I created a blog and starting buying and stashing things for the project.  I then decided the rooms were too small to accommodate my ideas!  So, not only did this never happen but I sold the Honeychurch and a lot of things (at a loss!) and bought the Lyddington.  This became Bentleys a 1911 shop in Erdington (Birmingham).

Here comes number three - O'Rourkes Post Office, already made up as such, waiting to be transformed into Chocolat - the movie.  I wanted to make as close a replica as I could to the chocolaterie of that film (and book).  Now I am about to begin I can see a million problems.  The building style does not lend itself to a French village shop - probably the biggest problem!  I have no idea how to find things to buy which will give it a flavour of  late 1950's France.  If I am successful the characters should look right.  So, I have wriggled into the position of moving the story to a small English village.  They would encounter the same problems as in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain but then so do I.  They still bring their 1959 Frenchness with them and I am still stuck.

Some more very practical issues also get in the way.  I don't want to have to fill a huge shop floor with just chocolates.  It means buying or making zillions - either way I am outfaced by the challenge.  I also think they sort of get wasted as they are so tiny - about an eighth of an inch if I want to keep in scale - you can't appreciate the work/detail of hundreds of items at that scale filling a shop.

Another practical thought I have also rather changes the time period.  Each of my two other projects have been tremendous fun as I learned new stuff all the way along.  This time I would like to have a real go at the electrical stuff.  I have done the basics of central ceiling lights and fires, now I want to light a shop as it would be done today.  I want to figure out how to light a shop sign and how to do lighting in/over display areas.  My 1959 French chocolaterie in a small village is now becoming a 2013 chocolaterie/patisserie in a small touristy village in the Cotswolds.  

The narrative is essential to the actual physical planning for me.  When I know the story of what the shop is and who lives there I will know what I need to do it. 

So.... my plan so far, for what it is worth (!) is

• Write the story - this will be a page at the top of the Blog.
• Work out the actual construction of the shop - so far I have had a café downstairs and chocolaterie in one room upstairs and patisserie in the other.  I still quite like that.  The doubt I have with that plan is that a café means just a lot of similar tables covering the largest area so it doesn't seem to offer a big enough challenge right now.  Plan two and the current one is a chocolaterie/patisserie downstairs and a sitting room and bedroom above, with the suggestion of rooms behind.  Cliché?  aaaarrrgggh!
• In April I need to start on the construction as I am writing an article a month on the project as it goes along - so far - stasis...........